Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

The attack on such advocacy of drumhead justice was led by Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Prompt justice based on fair legal procedures, Stimson argued, was “consistent with the advance of civilization” and would “have all the greater effect upon posterity.” Stimson made clear that he had in mind trials before military commissions, which would be empowered to expedite proceedings by making their own “bare bones” rules to avoid the legal technicalities that might arise in civilian courts or even in ordinary military courts martial. The secretary of war noted that apart from meeting the “judgment of history,” such trials would serve the educational and historical function of establishing a record of the enemy’s transgressions. In his memoirs, published shortly after the war, Stimson declared that aggression “is an offense so deep and so heinous that we cannot endure its repetition.”